"All this region is very level and full of forests, vines and butternut trees. No Christian has ever visited this land and we had all the misery of the world trying to paddle the river upstream." Samuel de Champlain

My translation of article written by Lise Millette from The Canadian Press

The shale gas industry has a hard time gaining the trust of the people of Quebec and it can only blame itself, says a recent study.

A report that just came out from the cross-disciplinary research group in sustainable development at the HEC (Hautes Études Commerciales) comes to the conclusion that the companies involved with this file in Quebec depend on voluntary and non-homogeneous social responsibility principles, are very little inclined to instill precautionary measures and are stingy when it comes to reveal information about themselves.

Emmanuel Raufflet, the man responsible for this study mandated by the Environment Ministry's strategic assessments, thinks that the botched launching of the shale gas industry in Quebec comes from the fact that the companies failed to get the public’s' trust.

"The companies communicated badly. We did a fairly general research on who they where and we had a hard time finding that information. It's like asking people's trust but then hiding behind a screen. Those are not winning circumstances to instill trust." he said.

At least, one of the players in the industry recognizes the opacity of some companies harmed all the others.

"What I learned during the past few years is that to talk and explain makes everything better. No system, no one is perfect. But if we recognize who we are and where the risks are, folks will have more trust in us than if we hide." says Michael Binnion, chairman and CEO of Questerre Energy, a company that gets rather good marks in Raufflet's study.

This document claims that 30% of companies studied took precautionary measures, like the construction of wells with cement and metal to avoid leaks, integrity tests of wells before fracking, maintenance of the installations and training of employees to avoid human error.

From the 24 companies that publish no information at all about their social responsibility, 22 of them are active in Quebec.

As for their development practices, only 5 out of the 26 companies that hold exploitation permits in the province publish some information. They are Corridor, Gastem, Questerre, Suncor and Talisman (although this last one said it would no longer continue it's shale activities in the province since this study was published).

The study points out that the lack of disclosure, be it about the general aspects of the company as much as it's environmental commitments, is not likely to create any winning conditions to instill favourable social acceptability.

Michael Binnion denies the theory that the development was completely improvised. He admits that there was important variations among the companies in the way they worked, but he says everybody has his share of responsibility.

"What rather happened is that some made surprise discoveries and suddenly were interested in exploiting. But the work had started much earlier than that. We had been working at it for 10 years and followed a methodical process. In 2000, nobody wanted to talk to me about shale, and today, everybody is interested." he said.

The data gathered by the researchers at the HEC also suggests that there is a cultural element in Quebec that says that traditionally, the exploitation of natural resources isn't usually through oil or gas, which could have raised a certain mistrust. The persistence of the perception, for a part of the population, that the government was more on the side of the industry rather than the environment did not help in calming this suspicion, adds the researcher.

"We could rewrite history with other players, with companies with stronger processes, and things may have gone better." says Mr Raufflet.

The lack of maturity of the companies and the absence of financial margins explains partly why some of them don't have established practices for standardization of processes and social responsibility.

"In an emerging industry, it's normal to see small players. The inconvenience, we had seen it in the United States, is that these companies exist for a few years and then dissolve, leaving the site abandoned and the population is stuck with substantial environmental liabilities to deal with." continues Mr Raufflet.

All these elements bore down on the development of this industry which did not know how to demonstrate it's willingness to take upon itself it's social responsibility, as per this HEC study. It mentions that the Quebec Oil and Gas Association did indeed draw up guiding principles, but without making them compulsory.

These principles are also less demanding and less precise that those of other associations on the planet, like the International Energy Agency or the Interfaith Centre for Corporate Responsibility in the U.S.

Quebec declared a total moratorium on the exploration and the exploitation of shale gas, but this truce is still not in force yet. The Environment Minister Yves-François Blanchet should submit a bill in the next couple of weeks to establish this moratorium.

The committee of the strategic environmental assessment of shale gas was mandated by the previous Liberal Environment Minister Pierre Arcand in May of 2011. With a budget of nearly $7 million to do many studies, the deadline is November 29 2013 to present the final report.

I'm the second generation of my family that lives in Richelieu, Quebec, in Canada. My family tree, both from my mother's and my father's side, has its roots in Quebec since the beginning of the 1600s: my ancestors crossed the ocean from France, leaving Perche and Normandy behind them. Both French AND English are my mother tongues: I learned to talk in both languages when I was a baby, and both my parents were perfectly bilingual too.